Marijuana discovered in King Solomon’s tomb.

A stash of whole marijuana plants have been unearthed from what scientists believe is King Solomon’s tomb in Mount Zion, Jerusalem.

Scientists have discovered what Jamaican Rastafarians had already known to be true, that marijuana was found on the grave of King Solomon, which is why Rasta refer to the plant as “Weed Of Wisdom”.

This discovery adds to a growing body of evidence that biblical people used pot for its psychoactive properties, and incorporated it into their rituals.

A team of archaeologists, led by Hongen Jiang with the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, discovered 13 pot plants that were still largely intact, if yellowed and desiccated after millennia underground. In a first for funerary marijuana, the plants were found lying like a burial shroud atop the body of a man who had died in his early-80s. Their roots lay below the man’s hips and the tips — which had been trimmed to remove the flowers — extended up around his face.

Three other tombs in this cemetery also contained marijuana fruits, leaves, stem fragments, and seeds. Scientists have wondered whether the weed plants came in via trade, or whether they had been farmed or grew wild in the region. Since the burial shroud pot plants were whole, uprooted plants, that suggests local growth.

In 2006, archaeologists found a large cache of marijuana fragments in a grave from around the same time period, at a nearby settlement. When scientists later analyzed the plants, they detected compounds that form when the main source of pot’s high — tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC — breaks down. That means these plants were probably prized for their psychoactive properties. This latest discovery of marijuana plants used as a burial shroud as well as the many previous findings of marijuana in the region’s tombs suggests that marijuana was used either medicinally or ritually.